


As Much as Food Loves Salt

by gardnerhill



Category: Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: Cocaine, Community: watsons_woes, Drunkenness, Early Days, Gambling, Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:40:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25177822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: What use can be made of two useless elements?
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31
Collections: Watson's Woes JWP Collection: 2020





	As Much as Food Loves Salt

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2020 July Watson's Woes Promptfest prompt #9, **Basic Chemistry:** Describe an event in the early days of Holmes and Watson.

I trudged through the dockside alleys heading back to the main street. That was one thing I'd picked up in the Army – how to disguise a drunken stagger as a firm slog, a valuable technique for avoiding robbers. This precaution was strictly to avoid getting ensnared in a street brawl, for if any robbers wanted my money they'd need to go to the man running the dice table at the Punch Bowl.

Now to explain to my new flatmate that I'd lost my share of the rent money this month. Again.

A moot point. For when I returned to 221b (not meeting Mrs. Hudson's eye as she let me in, which told her everything), Sherlock Holmes looked up from contemplating the fireplace, seated cross-legged and without a stitch of clothing on. His dark eyes that swept me top to bottom were dilated, and his inner arm marked with a fresh needle-puncture. "I see I shall have to trounce some fellow in the Punch Bowl soon, if we are to keep these lodgings." His eyes narrowed. "Or worse, get paid by some brainless aristocrat to tell him he dropped his diamond fob behind his clothes-press."

Anything I wanted to snap at him – _of course take the bloody dull profitable case you ass!_ – was negated by my and my chequebook's own state. I sank into the ratty chair that had become mine. "It seems we deserve each other."

Holmes held his syringe between his fingers, twirling it like a card-sharp. "In chemistry, we often find that when two volatile compounds come together, they create a by-product that is more useful than either alone. What results when a violent, unstable metal reacts with a deadly gas?"

I snorted. "Which of us is which?" Sodium and chlorine, a schoolboy's riddle.

"Ask yourself this, Watson. What would we two be doing this very moment, if we hadn't agreed to share rooms?"

I'd be sleeping in the park and sucking pricks along with the other homeless soldiers. Holmes? Easily dead of an overdose, or inanition. Ah.

"It's common stuff. But the lack of it would lead to calamities beyond bland food."

I shook my head at these words from a cocaine addict, feeling much better than a penniless drunk should. "Tragically, we are the salt of the earth."

I hadn't expected to laugh tonight – and from the expression on my new friend's face, neither did he.


End file.
